Useless Facts

I learned this today...

When the RMS Titanic sank in April 1912, (killing at least 1,500 passengers and crew) she also sank with 3,500 sacks of mail on board (with roughly 7,000,000 pieces of mail being lost). The most valuable item lost when the ship sank was an oil painting from 1814 (La Circassienne au Bain by Merry-Joesph Blondel), with the owner claiming $100,000 compensation from the White Star line (about $2.5 million in today's money).

 

On Gilligan’s Island, the skipper’s real name was Capt. Jonas Grumby.

 

But the Australian word which is derived from it, "seppo," applies equally to all Americans.

 

The Racoon Dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) is neither racoon nor dog, but a basal member of the Canidae family, sole representative of genus Nyctereutes.

 

Tanuki!

 

Yeppers.

 

When potatoes were first introduced to Europe they were regarded by some as an aphrodisiac.

Spoiler

It's Friday, gonna buy me a big bag of spuds and cook them up for when Mrs. A gets home from work. We're gonna get freaky!!!!

 

I can believe that.

 

Convo derailer in...
3...
2....

Spoiler: ...1

 

I saw an interview with the rapper Ice-T in which he confessed to having been involved in armed robberies in his younger days. He said that when he was in the club and said "Throw your hands up in the air" everyone knew to have their wallet in one hand and their watch in the other.

 

Haha, that's me in the moshpit.

 

I feel the art historian in me crying.

 

That's me in the spot. Light. Losing my religion.

 

For anybody who does write fantasy, I suppose this
wouldn't be useless...Though it is still a neat idea.

 

Helmuth von Moltke is the father of Prussian/German military. He was a multilingual genius whose military theory is still being taught in schools across the world and whose excellence secured a series of crushing Prussian victories that led to the unification of Germany. He is often placed together with the other "fathers" of modern Germany: von Roon and Bismarck.

What you may not know about him is that he also published a romantic comedy titled "Die Beiden Freunde".

 

I didn't know they came with flameless heaters.
(Most don't come with crayons sadly.)

 

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos added $13 billion to his net worth yesterday.

 

Did you know that mini-scorpions live in old book collections, and are actually beneficial to the collection? They eat the mites that eat the glue that binds the paper that makes old books that live in the library that Jack built.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/how-book-scorpions-tend-to-your-dusty-tomes/

 

Okay, I now know I've been in the UK a long time—and have a handle on insider jargon. Here 'MRE' is the shorthand for 'Medical Records.' As a medical receptionist, I was constantly asked to 'bring me the patient's MRE.' Meaning 'bring me his file.'

 

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
is pretty useless. But it is mind-blowing to watch an analog of people being born and dying in real time.

 

Not if you're the type that subscribes to existentialism. But seriously, that's cool. Another website also monitors the US national debt in real time, so you can see just how deeply screwed we are. xD

 

America is third for highest country population. Ireland is 124th.

 

China has everyone's butt kicked. Theirs is 1 billion. India is a close second.

For the exact opposite, Vatican City has the lowest population in the world with around 800 folks. Nauru follows up with 10,756 folks.

Nauru had a civil war that lasted ten years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauruan_Civil_War). The German Empire absorbed it until around 1914 when it was given up to Australia. The country didn't get independence until 1968.

Oh, and during WWII, the Japanese occupied it, resulting in the US bombing its naval bases.

 

I'm proud of my resident country being so far down on the list.
I think it's fairly likely that me and CT will end up moving back down here in years to come.